TWs for this chapter: drug abuse and overdose, reference to the physical restraint of people with mental illnesses, one of the characters is a trans* teen prostitute (no, she's not the one with the drug problem), also some period language used to describe developmentally disabled people that reads as offensive today.
(I promise this story will not always be this grim, but when you're telling a story about someone who tried to bring about an apocalypse... well...)
On the plus side, Bering & Wells slow burn tees off here. :)
Nurse Valerie truly does have a soft spot for Helena Wells when Helena isn't going out of her way to be difficult.
Just look at her, now, the way she's talking to Tommy Smith, the elderly simpleton, who is devastated because he accidentally tipped a bird's nest and broke the eggs on the ground. She is soft with him, patient, as together they put the nest back in the tree.
"There, now, the mother bird can come back and lay more eggs here," Valerie hears Helena say.
Tommy nods and sniffs, his greying hair flopping down over his forehead. "Will she?" he asks.
"She might," Helena says, "but if she doesn't, it will be because she found a new tree and built a new nest, up high, where nobody can accidentally disturb it. Don't you worry, she'll have plenty of young, yet."
In moments like this, Valerie truly thinks that Helena has the soul of a wonderful mother, buried beneath her broken psyche. It's incredibly tragic, particularly given the circumstances.
/
"You're pregnant?!"
Charles shouts it instead of "hello" when he finds Helena in the common area, his words echoing between the wood floor and the plaster walls of the room. The soft buzz of conversation around the room dies; the gazes of nurses and patients turn and alight on the brother and sister talking in the corner.
"Charles," Helena says, placating, "Please don't lose your temper. It won't change anything."
"Don't lose my—" Charles begins, loudly again. Helena cocks her eyebrow; Charles glances around the room, catches the eyes of their audience, and lowers his voice. "Don't lose my temper?" he whispers, enraged spittle flying from his lips. He doesn't care. "How could you get pregnant in here, Helena? How?"
Helena has the audacity to actually roll her eyes at him. "Surely, brother, you don't need me to explain that to you." She crosses her arms over her chest.
Charles has had a lifetime to develop a tolerance for his sister's unapologetic arrogance and sarcasm, but now, in the face of a problem that he, not she, will somehow need to resolve, he reminds himself to breathe, deeply, in through the mouth and out through the nose. He presses the heels of his hands to his eyes, and then runs his palms down the length of his face.
"Dr. Austin has asked me to find a home for the baby," Charles says.
Helena's eyebrows come together. "What? Why? The child is mine."
Charles fights not to fist his fingers in his own hair in exasperation. "You can't raise a child in a sodding asylum, Helena," he shouts, gesturing to the room with an open hand, as though the inappropriateness of the environment requires pointing out.
"I won't be in the sodding asylum by then. If this doesn't convince them that I'm cured, I can't imagine what will!" Helena shouts back, throwing her arms up.
"Miss Wells! Mr. Wells!"
Charles and Helena turn their heads simultaneously toward the voice. It's Nurse Valerie, approaching them at a quick clip, jaw set across her angular, unpleasant face. "You're upsetting the other patients. I must ask you to soften your tone, or I shall be forced to ask you to take your leave, Mr. Wells."
Helena palms the back of her neck and looks down at the floor. "I'm ever so sorry, nurse. We'll be quieter."
Charles shifts his gaze from the nurse to Helena and back again. "Yes," he says, "I do apologize."
Nurse Valerie nods officiously and turns on her heels to resume distributing the afternoon medications.
"Helena," Charles says, softer, "the doctor doesn't think you're cured. He thinks you've gotten worse. He says your sexual inversion disorder has been supplanted by severe hysteria."
Helena's eyes widen as though she's been slapped and she steps back, fumbling until she grasps the arm of a rocking chair and collapses into it. Her hands drift to her knees where they bunch and release the fabric of her dress, over and over again.
"Dr. Austin said that?" she says quietly.
Charles pulls over a chair from the nearest table and sits opposite her, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees.
"How did this happen, Helena? The doctor says that all of the guards were reviewed and he's confident it was one of them."
She blinks in silence at the movement of her hands against her own knees.
"Dr. Austin says that in a moment of delusion, you must have seduced one of the half-wits in here," Charles tries again, as softly as he can.
Helena's eyes snap up at that, hands spreading flat against her thighs. "Dr. Austin said that?" she repeats, in a harsh whisper.
Charles nods.
Helena's eyes widen and moisten, and she pulls away from him, just a little. "You don't believe him, surely," she says.
Charles heaves out a heavy breath and shrugs. "I've no idea what to believe, Helena."
The moisture in Helena's eyes finally wells up and crests over her lower lashes. Charles remembers, oddly, the moment when they were seven when their father told them that Charles would be enrolled in school, but not Helena, because if the family could only afford to educate one child it should surely be the boy; she had been devastated, consoled only by Charles' promise that he would let her borrow his books when he wasn't using them.
She pulls her sleeves over her hands and scrubs angrily at her cheeks, almost as pale as the walls around them. "Do you truly think so little of me?" she murmurs sadly.
Charles reaches into his inside pocket and pulls out his handkerchief, which he hands to Helena. She eyes it for a moment like it might explode, but then accepts it and dabs at the corners of her eyes.
"I just need to know what happened, Helena," Charles says. "I have seven months to find a home for the baby, and if the father is a simpleton then Dr. Austin says the baby—"
"Dr. Austin this, Dr. Austin that," Helena spits, much louder than necessary. "Dr. Austin is the greatest simpleton in this house!" She stands abruptly, balling his handkerchief and tossing it into his lap with completely uncalled-for aggression.
Charles stands with her. "Helena—"
"I would like you to leave now, Charles. Thank you for visiting." She spins on her heel and crosses the room to another empty rocking chair where she sits, covers herself with a blanket, and closes her eyes.
Charles doesn't know whether to cry, laugh, or scream at his sister's perpetual impossibility. But he remembers their childhood and how Helena would help him with his mathematics and spelling, even though she'd learned them from naught but books and he'd been tutored in school.
He'll find a home for the baby somehow. His parents are, of course, out of the question, and there's no way he could raise a child on his own, nor afford a housekeeper to help him with the job. But he'll find something.
/
Charles looks tired and haggard when Wolcott sees him at The Morlock's Arms that night. It's not an uncommon look on him ("studies at university are stressful," he says, usually) but it's especially stark this evening, as though someone's spilled an inkwell beneath each of the man's eyes.
"Long day?" Wolcott asks.
"You've no idea," Charles sighs as he heaves himself onto a barstool.
"Did you go to the hospital again today?" Wolcott asks. He knows Charles has a relative who's been sick in hospital for many months, but Charles has never offered more detail, and Wooley's had the distinct impression that further inquiry wouldn't be welcome.
Charles nods, and then raises his hand to flag down the bartender and order a stout.
"Well," Wooley says as Charles awaits his order, "I'm afraid the trail of the Ripper's gone cold, so I can't regale you with more of those stories. But I've been reading that book you recommended."
"Oh, the Sherlock Holmes thing?" Charles asks. His pint splashes a little as the bartender deposits it in front of him; he picks it up and indulges in a healthy gulp.
Wooley smiles a little and nods. "It's great fun. What I wouldn't give for a consultant like that over at the Yard," he adds, laughing, "We'd have got the bloody Ripper months ago."
/
There's no warning this time, no knock on the door, to alert Jonathan Austin of his unexpected guest; the door simply opens, she comes in to his office, and it closes behind her.
He clears his throat. "Miss Wells. I don't believe we have an appointment right now?"
She looks at him and lifts an eyebrow, cocky, as though she knows something he doesn't. Wordlessly, she meanders to the bookcases on the far wall.
"Here lie the riches of Bethlem Hospital," she says, wandering slowly alongside the shelves, trailing her fingers over the leather-bound spines. "We've discussed the vice of selfishness, Dr. Austin; it's improper to keep such bounty all to oneself."
Jonathan sets his pen on the edge of his blotter. "The books wouldn't be good for you. We've discussed this."
But Wells keeps moving, eyes darting from shelf to shelf, finally alighting on one brown volume. She reaches up, catches the corner with the tips of her fingers and pulls the book down into her hands. "E.B. Tylor, the great ethnologist," she says, as she opens the book and begins to thumb through the pages.
"Put that back, please, Miss Wells." Jonathan is controlling his irritation well, he thinks, particularly in the face of such glaring disrespect for his prescribed treatment regime for this patient.
She cocks her head to the side, acquiescent, and closes the cover. "Tell me, Dr. Austin," she says, as she reaches up to replace the book on the shelf, "do you subscribe to Mr. Tylor's theory that our society is the most developed in the world, and that every other savage or barbarian culture is simply losing the race we call 'progress'?"
"Miss Wells—"
"Because I can't help but wonder," she speaks over him, and he feels himself recoil as if slapped by the indignity.
"Miss Wells—" he says, louder this time, but she turns on her heel to face him and begins to stride toward his desk, speaking louder still—
"—wonder if the so-called savages of the world are also prone to disavowing their unborn children, or if that's a modern quality of this so very progressiveestablishment," she growls, and the fronts of her thighs are pressed to the edge of his desk opposite him.
Oh, no. No. She's got some nerve, bringing this up. He slams both palms against his desk and is gratified when she twitches a little in surprise, her self-righteous smirk dropping for just a moment.
"You can't possibly be insinuating that I'm the father of your child," he growls.
And there's her smirk again, the pretentious, arrogant…
"Oh, can't I?" she says, with a chuckle—she's laughing at him. "Have there been any developments that have radically altered our scientific understanding of where pregnancies originate? Because as we both know, if new knowledge has been uncovered since I arrived here, I certainly wouldn't be aware of it."
Jonathan pushes his chair back and leaps to his feet, leaning over the desk toward his patient. He takes a deep breath, releases it, and says, as calmly as he can: " I cannot possibly be the first or only man you've had here. You're oversexed, Miss Wells, it's a clinical issue, and these things emerge in patterns. I don't know how many other guards or patients you've seduced, but care will be taken in your observation until—"
A smaller, strong fist pounds fiercely on the surface of his desk. "You most certainly are the only one!" Wells shouts. "Oversexed? You actually think I would... I would do that to one of the poor men trapped in here—"
"Yes," Jonathan says, in a voice he hopes is calming. "I do. And I don't blame you for it. Sickness is sickness."
"Sickness is…" she shakes her head, as though incredulous, and lifts one hand to cover her mouth. She closes her eyes to re-center herself. "This is a pointless conversation," she says, exhaling. "Here's a more meaningful one: the child growing in my womb is half yours and I have no home to give it. Do you?"
It is, as they say, the straw that breaks the camel's back. Jonathan sits back down in his chair, reclines a little, and picks up his pen in a gesture that, he hopes, she will interpret as dismissal. "There's no place in my home for your bastard, if that's what you're asking."
And that's when she completely loses control.
"My bastard? My bastard?" She slams the front of the desk with both hands. "It's a child! There is a person growing inside me who needs a home, and you won't let me raise it—I would sooner raise a child in the seventh circle of hell than in this establishment—" her hands grip the back of the chair opposite him and flip it onto its back.
Jonathan stands again and reaches across the table to try to catch one of her flailing limbs. "Please, Miss Wells, this agitation isn't good for the baby."
"What, now you care about what's good for the baby?" She bats his hands away easily and reaches for his lapels, and she's surprisingly strong, absurdly so, and Jonathan feels himself pulled over his desk toward her with a jerk that sends his own chair toppling backward. "What's good for the baby is a stable home, a family," Wells growls, "and incidentally, what's good for a family is for self-important hucksters like you to keep their spindly little pricks in their trousers—"
The door opens. Someone from outside the office has finally heard the commotion. Two guards charge in, and perhaps it's because she's so worked up that they manage to subdue her more easily than they often do, even while she bucks and fights in their grip.
In rushes Nurse Valerie with the bottle of laudanum, but—
"No laudanum," Jonathan says, standing straighter and smoothing his lapels back down against his chest, "nor any other tranquilizer while she's pregnant. We'll need to use other means."
"Yes, Dr. Austin," Nurse Valerie nods and runs back out of the room to fetch the necessary restraints.
/
A fortnight passes before Charles feels ready to return to Bethlem to visit Helena after his abrupt dismissal the previous time. When he arrives, the nurse stops him in the entryway.
"She's not ready," the nurse says. "If you'll wait here, someone will fetch you shortly."
It's a puzzling development; there has never been any "preparation" required before he could see her on Sunday afternoons in the past. Something to do with the pregnancy, he reasons, and he slides his hands into his pockets while he waits in the lobby.
When he sees Helena in the common room, she looks… different. Her hair, always kept up in a neat chignon, lies down against her back in a simple braid. And her eyes—they aren't vacant, as when she's been drugged, but they're simply… dull.
"What's happened to you, Helena?" he asks her, softly.
She shakes her head and waves her hand at him, dismissively. "I'm fine. Shall we go for a walk in the garden?"
He agrees, but as they walk he can't help noticing that she seems to have developed some tics he's never noticed before: she flexes and releases her fists almost obsessively, and rolls her shoulders often as if to loosen them. He wonders if it might be the pregnancy, too, though she's too early on for there to be many visible changes.
"I've had quite a bit of time alone, lately, so I passed the hours by telling a story to the baby." Her hands rest over her abdomen, like a shield between it and the quiet garden around them. "If I tell you, would you write it, like you did the last one?"
Charles smiles. "Certainly, Helena. What's this one about?"
"It's about a lieutenant talking to an ethnologist. The lieutenant tells the story of how he accidentally persuaded a group of Indian Sepoy that he was flying, when in reality he merely managed to survive jumping off a cliff."
"Sounds thrilling," Charles says. "Start from the beginning?"
Keisha lights a cigarette and thanks god, or the universe, or whatever, that the weather is finally warming up, like actually warming up, after this crazy-ass winter and late spring.
"Can I borrow that?" asks Dawn, pointing to the lighter. "Mine's outta juice."
Keisha nods and hands it to her, then bends down and straightens the hem of her skirt. She's tall. Crazy tall to begin with, then add the six-inch monster heels and she's practically a giant. She hates it for life, but not for work. For work, it helps, a lot of the time. Guys who go for girls like her usually like the fact that she's tall.
"Hey," Dawn says. Keisha straightens up and Dawn is holding the bic back out to her, but as Keisha takes it, Dawn jerks her chin to point down the road. "Someone's lookin' at you," she says, before taking a thick drag and backing away. "You get this one, you take something to Feather, yeah?"
Keisha nods yes and then turns around, and sure enough there's someone walking up the way, and when you been doing this job long enough you can tell when someone's looking at you even before they can tell it themselves, and this person's looking. Typically the johns come through here in cars but sometimes walkers happen. The walkers are good because usually they just want a couple hours in the hotel around the corner and sometimes Keisha can get another trick or two in in the same night.
It takes a second before Keisha realizes it's a woman who's looking, walking down the sidewalk in expensive clothes like she owns the damn place, like this shithole is someplace better than Corona after dark, which is what it is. For a second Keisha worries about this woman checking her out, walking like that, because half a block past Keisha this woman's going to cross Joey and Joey doesn't like it when people don't know how to behave on his turf.
But the woman's still looking, walking closer, and she's not even faking anymore like she's not. So Keisha stands a little taller, steps out into the middle of the sidewalk and cocks her hip, stretches out one long, long leg and says, "Hey, honey, you looking for company tonight?"
The woman stops and looks Keisha straight in the eye, and that's weird because usually they don't want to look her in the eye at first, like they're embarrassed, like she isn't selling them something she's sold a thousand times before, like she's going to judge them for it. But this woman, she's looking at Keisha out of the corner of her eye like a teacher who don't like your excuse for being late to class or something.
Keisha steps back, feeling like a butterfly on a pin. She opens her mouth, trying to figure out how to back her way out of this hella uncomfortable situation but then the woman starts talking.
"How much for the pleasure of your company for the evening?" she asks, and damn if she don't sound like Mary Poppins or some shit, like she's from England.
"Depends how much time you want," Keisha says. "And what services."
The woman stares at her again, like she's staring right through her, and Keisha fights the urge to step back, like these sidewalks haven't been hers since she was fourteen.
"Well, perhaps that will depend on how well we get along," the woman says. "Come along."
And the whole conversation is so weird that Keisha goes with it, because even if this woman's a serial killer or something Keisha's got a good foot on her in height and at least fifty pounds in weight and she's pretty sure nothing bad can happen. So she follows her down the sidewalk, past Joey who glares at her because she's not supposed to talk business on the street like that. Half a block later Keisha's phone beeps. The text is from Joey:
if shes a narc ur on ur own
Keisha closes the phone and puts it back in her purse. "There's a place over here we can go—"
But the woman keeps walking. "I'm hungry," she says. "Is there a place where we could perhaps find something to eat?"
Keisha walks her to the Dunkin Donuts but the woman turns her nose up at it (seriously?) so they keep walking for awhile—it feels like forever in Keisha's shoes—before they get to a cleaner part of Queens and there's a Denny's. This is way outside of Keisha's usual turf; the blonde at the host stand looks her up and down before taking them to a booth in the back corner.
Well, whatever. She's been on the wrong side of worse.
"Order whatever you want," the woman says.
The woman orders a club sandwich and fries (seriously, who buys anything that's not breakfast at Denny's?) and Keisha orders a Lumberjack Slam, 'cause she's aiming for leftovers.
"So you gonna tell me your name?" Keisha asks.
The woman smiles, but just barely. "Perhaps. Will you tell me yours?"
"Perhaps," Keisha says, mocking just a little, and she's just being contrary, she knows, but whatever.
"A different question, then," the woman says, leaning forward on her elbows on the table. "How old are you?"
"Twenty," Keisha says, smooth as anything. But the woman cocks her eyebrow and twists her mouth to the side.
Keisha rolls her eyes. "Fine, eighteen."
The woman shakes her head no, ever so slightly, and Keisha's good at this, she's been doing this for awhile, like more than a year but she's never been caught out so quick, and while she was maybe a little worried that this woman was a narc after getting Joey's text, she's not worried about it anymore, because no cop figures it out that quick.
"Sixteen," Keisha says.
The woman nods like she heard what she wanted to hear, and sits up again. "Helena," she says.
Keisha sinks back against the bench. "Okay. Keisha."
"Well, Keisha," Helena says, "tell me how a young woman such as yourself would find herself living as you do."
Keisha's eyes open wider, because usually people are sort of weird about using girl or guy words for her when they don't know her well. A lot of the time people use the wrong words but when it's johns they usually just avoid using words like that altogether.
This lady is weird, Keisha thinks.
"If you don't know the answer, I think that's a kinda personal question," she says.
"Well, I'm compensating you for your time this evening, so I believe I'm entitled to ask you whatever I want."
Keisha opens her mouth because hell no, paying for her time doesn't give some bitch the right to know her life's story, but the woman holds her hand up to stop her, like she's expecting it, and says, "You need not answer truthfully, nor even answer at all. I prefer honesty, but I do always enjoy a good story when that isn't an option."
Keisha exhales, and damn if this isn't the most unusual trick she's pulled in… maybe ever.
"I guess some parents are okay with it when their little boy says she wants to live as the little girl she always was, but not mine," she shrugs. "Whatever. I made it work. Obvi."
"Yes, obvi," Helena says, and there's something thin in her voice, thin and angry. She's looking at Keisha but she's sort of looking through her, and one hand slides inside the collar of her shirt and wraps around her necklace.
"Hey," Keisha says, "you okay?"
This seems to sort of jolt Helena out of it and she says, "Yes, yes, of course."
The food comes and they eat and they chat, and this lady is weird (like, Keisha's pretty sure she didn't know what GPS was. The hell?) but she's also nice enough. And she's all proper, with that accent like somebody from the movies or something, but she's eating this Denny's sandwich like it's the last meal she's ever gonna have.
"So you're from, like, England or something?" Keisha asks.
"Yes," says Helena, as she smothers a fry in ketchup.
"So why are you here in New York? In—in Queens?"
"Work," Helena says. "A colleague of mine had some things stored in Queens that I needed to retrieve." She takes a long drink of her water and Keisha can tell that this line of conversation is over.
Keisha has set her silverware down when Helena looks at her, and then at her plate, that still has a whole slice of French toast on it, and some sausages, and some potatoes. Keisha ate all the eggs, 'cause they don't travel well.
Helena looks at Keisha's face, and then at her hands. Keisha realizes she's tapping the tabletop without really thinking about it. She stops.
"You're still hungry," Helena says. "Why don't you finish it?"
Keisha feels her eyes go wide, deer in headlights. She picks up her fork because Helena's right, she is still hungry, but she was really hoping to box up these leftovers and bring them to Feather. If she can find Feather, that is.
"I thought I'd save it for tomorrow," Keisha says. "A girl's gotta watch her waist and stuff."
"If you were watching your waistline, you wouldn't have ordered that meal," Helena counters.
And it's so weird because seriously, this woman sees right through her, and that isn't fucking typical for her because not to be whatever but you learn to be a damn good actress in this line of work.
Keisha sighs. "I was going to bring it to a friend."
Helena's sandwich freezes halfway to her mouth. "A friend," she says. "Is this friend a… colleague?"
Keisha can't help but snort a little at the word choice, like she works in an office or something, in some cubicle somewhere. "Sort of," she says. "On her good days."
"Finish your meal," Helena says. "I'll order something else for your friend, on one condition."
Keisha looks at her. Waits.
"I want you to take me to this friend of yours to deliver the meal in person."
Keisha starts shaking her head before Helena's even finished the sentence. "No. No. I mean, she can be hard to pin down, and she's in a real bad place these days—"
Helena holds up a hand. "You must have some sense of where she'd be if you'd been planning to bring food to her that you'd otherwise eat yourself. And I assure you, whatever her 'real bad place' may be, I'll be fine."
Keisha swallows and looks down. She wears a ring on her right thumb, just metal, nothing fancy, and she twirls it around with her other hand. Eventually, she picks up her fork. "Fine," she says. "But we're taking a cab to get there, and you're paying for it."
/
The cab doesn't want to go far off the main drag in this corner of town. Keisha says it's fine, they can walk the rest of the way, so Helena pays the man (Keisha has to remind her, awkwardly, to tip) and he's gone practically before the door is closed.
A couple blocks down the road is an abandoned storage facility. Keisha leads them down an alley to the entrance, which is really a big piece of plywood propped against where there used to be a door.
"You might want to take a few deep breaths before we go in there," Keisha says. "It smells pretty bad."
Helena smiles a little and, sure enough, inhales a few times deep through her nose, and out through her mouth. Then she wraps her fingers around the edge of the plywood and pulls it back so Keisha can lead them inside.
They find Feather passed out in a corner of one of the old storage rooms, curled up on her side with her back to the wall. The syringe is still on the floor, next to the foil and the tourniquet.
"Hey, Feather," Keisha says, kneeling beside her. She reaches down and taps her cheek a few times, gently. "Hey. Somebody wants to meet you. We brought you dinner, girl."
Helena has crouched down just behind Keisha, holding the Styrofoam container from Denny's in both hands.
After a minute Feather finally blinks. She looks up at Keisha and her eyes are all blown out, she's high as a fucking kite, of course. But she smiles.
"K," she says. "It's good to see you."
Used to be that Keisha would cry whenever she saw Feather like this. This was why Joey kicked her outta the fold: because she was a goddamn tweaker who couldn't be trusted to stay clean (from drugs, or from the bug). But Keisha's used to it now.
It's a shitty thing to be used to.
Keisha looks back. Helena is still holding the food and she's watching Feather blink herself into something sort of like alert. Slowly, shaking, she sits up against the wall, and Keisha hears a small gasp – the first really surprised reaction she's heard from Helena all evening.
It's the belly, Keisha knows. She's gotta be seven months in by now.
Helena crabwalks a little closer. She opens the Styrofoam and sets it in Feather's lap, plastic fork stabbed upright into a sausage link.
"Feather?" Helena says, glancing at Keisha for confirmation. Keisha nods. "Feather, you must eat something."
But Feather just stares at her like she's staring through her and doesn't move.
"I told you, she's in a bad way," Keisha says. "If we leave the food she'll eat it eventually, or, I mean, somebody will—"
But Helena has scooped a mouthful of scrambled eggs onto the fork and she's offering it to Feather's lips as though she's feeding a toddler or something. Feather blinks twice, slowly, and then opens her mouth.
And damn if Helena doesn't feed the girl the whole meal like that, while Keisha sits there, watching, fingers tangled in Feather's.
After, Feather tucks her knees up and rolls back down onto her side with a drawn-out sigh.
"We must get her to a hospital," Helena says. "For her own sake and for the baby's."
Keisha shakes her head and can't help but laugh, hard, like someone beat it out of her. "She been, like, twice since she got pregnant. They clean her up okay but as soon as she gets out she's back to the same thing. It's not like the state pays for halfway houses."
Helena inhales sharply and pulls her fingers through her hair. "How much do they cost, these halfway houses?"
Keisha shrugs. "I dunno. A lot. And the treatment programs cost even more."
The breath that escapes Helena's lungs seems like it's got a purpose or something, like it's hard and firm. "I'm going to look into it," she says.
/
Keisha's a little disappointed when Helena invites her back to her hotel, because she'd really let herself think that maybe that wasn't where this evening was going.
They take a cab across the bridge into Manhattan without talking. It's after 3 am when Helena leads her into a chain hotel. They stop at the desk and Helena asks for a disposable toothbrush and a razor and the guy working there eyes Keisha like she's a sewer rat, and then eyes Helena like she's almost as bad. Keisha's used to it, but she's surprised that Helena doesn't flinch.
There are posters everywhere for Fashion Week and Keisha stares at the one in the elevator, with the tall, thin model and the beautiful red dress.
"I'm clean, you know," Keisha says, because she realizes that she wants this woman to know this. She wants Helena to think well of her and it's the first time in awhile that she gave a damn about what anybody thought about her outside of work stuff. "Things get bad sometimes, but I always knew if I was going do this job I was going to spend my money on hormones and rent and maybe surgery one day, not meth." She swallows and looks down.
It's a bit of a white lie. Sometimes she's given Feather money for meth, because if there's anything worse than seeing her as fucked up as she was tonight, it's seeing her when she's withdrawing.
The hotel room has two big beds in it. Keisha walks to the middle of the floor, then turns and faces Helena and shrugs off her jacket. Keisha's slipping her fingers under the hem of her own shirt, about to pull it off when Helena steps close, puts her fingers on Keisha's wrists and stops her.
"For goodness' sake, darling, none of that," she says. She walks to the closet and pulls out one of the rough hotel bathrobes and offers it to Keisha with one hand, the toothbrush and razor in the other.
"I'd loan you some pyjamas but I doubt any of mine would fit you, you're so very tall," she says. She tilts her head toward the bathroom. "There's toothpaste in there, and soap, and of course plenty of towels if you wish to bathe. You can have the bed closest the door."
When Keisha comes out of the bathroom fifteen minutes later, the room is dark and Helena is asleep.
Weirdest trick ever, Keisha thinks, but she's not complaining as she slides into the other bed and sinks into the pillows.
Then, out of nowhere, Helena's voice: "I assume 'Feather' is a nickname."
"Yeah," Keisha says. "Her name's Heather, really."
"Why do you call her that, then?"
Keisha laughs, because it's kind of a morbid story, really. "'Cause birds need feathers to fly, but feathers can't fly on their own. And she's never been real good at living the difference between flying and falling, know what I mean?"
"I do," Helena says, and Keisha hadn't really meant it as a question but the way Helena answers is real honest.
"Goodnight, Keisha," Helena says.
"Goodnight."
/
When Keisha wakes up she hears the shower running. She blinks twice at the clock before she registers it's one o'clock in the afternoon.
Damn, she thinks, as she stretches.
Beside the clock there's a bag from Starbucks with her name written on the side in fancy-looking letters. Inside there's a coffee—not hot anymore, but warm is good enough—and a fruit cup and a glazed donut.
She's finished eating and is sipping the coffee, sitting in the chair by the window, when Helena comes out of the bathroom. She looks like she stepped out of another time, or something, with these loose-fitting pants and that tight-fitting vest.
"Good," she says, "you found your breakfast."
"Yeah," Keisha says. "Thanks."
Helena sits in the other chair, across the table. "I was supposed to work today," she says. "Over at the Fashion Week event. But given the hour it seems silly to start now."
Keisha just looks at her, under a cocked eyebrow, as she sips her coffee.
"It's been a terribly long time since I last visited New York City," Helena continues. "So very much has changed. I wondered if perhaps I could trouble you for your company for some time longer, as a tour guide?"
Weirdest trick ever, Keisha thinks again, but she shrugs, and nods. "You're the boss, long as you're paying," she says.
Helena's smile slips for just a tiny second but then it comes back, wider, maybe a little more forced. "Of course, darling," she says.
So Keisha plays tour guide for the afternoon. They ride a bus tour, wander around Times Square and Greenwich Village. Helena asks about the opera but Keisha says, honestly, that she doesn't know a thing about it.
At the end of the day Helena presses five crisp hundred-dollar bills into Keisha's palm, and Keisha's eyes are already about to fall out of her head when Helena pulls out two more twenties and hands them over, too.
"The extra's for your taxi home," she says. Then she reaches into her inside jacket pocket and pulls out a pen, and then fishes an old receipt out of her wallet.
"Here," she says, as she scribbles something on the back of the receipt. "My phone number. Please don't hesitate to call if you need anything. And keep me abreast of how your friend is doing. Contact me in one month's time either way. If I can help her in any significant way, I should know by then."
"Okay," Keisha says, and tucks the paper in the inside pocket of her purse. "So, I'll be seeing you?" she says as she climbs into the taxi.
Helena smiles quietly. "I certainly hope so, darling."
/
A little over two weeks later, Helena is sitting in the back seat of a taxi beside Claudia in Tamalpais, on their way to the energy drink factory. Myka is sitting in the front seat. Myka glances up at the rearview mirror and smiles to see H.G. and Claudia leaning together over H.G.'s grappler.
"The cable is hollow," H.G. is saying, "so that the wire that triggers the claw can pass through. When you pull the trigger here, the first click launches the grappler, the second opens the claw, and the third releases and retracts the whole thing."
"This is so badass," Claudia gushes. "And it's all powered with just a high-tensile spring?"
H.G. just cocks her eyebrow at that, and nods.
"Hey, H.G.?" Myka asks.
"Yes?" When she looks up, meeting Myka's eye in the rear-view, her eyebrow is still cocked and the edge of her lip still curled and Myka swallows against a surprising tug, deep in her gut.
"Where—um, where did you get that grappler, anyway? Was it in your house in London, or is this a new one you built?"
H.G. smiles wider, now. "Come, Myka. A lady must have her secrets."
Now it's Myka's turn to cock her eyebrow. "Saying things like that doesn't help in the trust department, if that's really what you're after."
"Convincing you both is only the first step," H.G. says, shrugging. "I need something to keep for the regents."
Myka bites her lips and squints into the mirror, then she shakes her head, bemused, and looks down. "You really don't want to do this the easy way, do you?"
H.G. smirks and leans forward, propping herself against the back of Myka's seat. She pauses there and waits, until Myka twists around and looks her in the eye. "Never," she says.
Myka rolls her eyes.
/
They're walking into the factory when Myka hears H.G.'s phone beep. H.G. pulls it from her inside pocket and reads the text message; her hand comes up to cover her mouth and her eyebrows come together ever so briefly.
"Everything okay?" Myka asks.
"I—yes. May I ask you a question?" H.G. asks. For the first time, Myka feels she can glimpse through the brash bravado and into something deeper. H.G. seems somehow… small.
"Sure," Myka says.
"Do the letters 'O' and 'D' mean anything in particular in today's parlance?"
"What, like, together? Like, 'to O.D.'?"
H.G. nods, and swallows.
"Yeah," Myka says, "it's slang, stands for overdose. Usually people use it to talk about drug overdoses."
"Death from the overconsumption of harmful, addictive substances," H.G. says, and despite the unpleasant subject matter Myka can't help but love that H.G. has casually strung together an eight-word sentence that includes three words of three or more syllables.
"People can sometimes overdose without dying if you get them to the hospital fast enough. Why?"
"No particular reason," she says, and Myka can tell it's for a very particular reason, though she has no idea what that may be.
/
Claudia is up to her armpits in an ice bath and Myka doesn't know whether she should be focusing on her or on H.G., who's over at the lab table yelling loudly at Mahoney about how neutralizing the acid won't work, it's too late for that, they need to denature the protein that's been produced in Claudia's body from those amino acids, and have their been no advances in science since her heyday in these fields!
Myka decides that she can't contribute to that conversation and that H.G. seems to have everything under control. So she turns back to Claudia, leans down, pushes sweaty hair back from her forehead.
"Just hang on," she says, "just hang on a little longer."
Claudia is shaking from the cold of the ice but when Myka feels her breath against her forearm it's hot, steaming hot, this-can't-be-good-for-her-organs hot.
"It's been a long time since anyone sat with me when I was sick," Claudia says, and she tries to smile, and Myka wants to say hush, wants to say you don't have to try so hard to be tough, wants to say me too. But she doesn't. She just smiles and grabs a handful of ice and presses it to Claudia's forehead.
"Myka," Claudia says quietly, her voice shaking. She licks her cracked lips.
"Yeah?" Myka says.
"If this happens I just want you to know—and tell Artie, and Pete, and—and Leena that I said thank you for giving me a shot. Nobody ever gave me a shot before you guys, and—"
"Shh," Myka murmurs. She feels tears welling up in her eyes because she's realizing, all of a sudden realizing how much she and Claudia are alike despite how different they are, going through life like they've always got something to prove. "Hush," she says again. "There are some very smart people over there working on getting you fixed, and if they fail I'm going to shoot both of them so they're very highly motivated."
"I'd be quite motivated regardless of the threat of a bullet, darling," says H.G., and Myka has forgotten, for a moment, that the others are within earshot.
H.G. is yelling at Mahoney again, now. Something about hydrochloric acid that Myka can't pretend to understand, but she has an idea and takes advantage of the distraction to lean closer to Claudia, who probably wouldn't mind a distraction herself.
"Claud," she says, "if I wanted you to read somebody's text message, once this is all done, what would you need to be able to do it?"
"A—a message that was already sent? Or in realtime as they're being sent and received?"
"One that was already sent."
Claudia licks her lips, then closes her mouth to let it re-salivate against the heat. "Just the phone number."
"Okay." Myka looks up. H.G. and Mahoney have their heads together over the centrifuge, which is conveniently making a loud whirring noise, so she sits back in her chair and fumbles for the pocket of H.G.'s jacket and pulls out her phone. It's a basic phone, probably a disposable prepaid. She opens it, finds the text messaging function, and sends a blank text to her own number. Immediately she feels her pocket buzz.
The next day, when they're back in South Dakota, Myka pulls H.G.'s number from her text message records and Claudia takes no time to track it. Almost immediately, she identifies the text she'd been wondering about:
Feather is dead. OD. Found her this AM. –K.
That night, Myka gets a text message to her own phone from the same number:
You needn't have taken my phone number surreptitiously, Agent Bering. Had you asked, I'd have given it gladly.
Myka stares, dumbfounded, at the text. She knew, of course, that Wells would have her number since Myka had entered it to send the text, but she hadn't anticipated that the Victorian woman would have known how to interpret what Myka had done.
She's still staring, contemplating the risks and benefits of this new situation and whether she should tell Artie, when her phone buzzes again:
How are you this evening? How is young Claudia recovering from her ordeal?
Myka stares, and smiles, and shrugs inwardly to herself.
We're both fine, she types back. How are you?
And so it begins.
This is the height of the OC action; we'll be mostly in canon characters from here on out I think.
